You know how, on cell phones, there is a bunch of special numbers you can dial that start either with a star or with a pound sign?

For instance, on Verizon you can dial Star-2-2-8 to update your roaming profile. Or pound-6-4-6 to check your airtime minutes.

Is there a comprehensive guide as to what all of these special numbers are? Can't find one in dox or on the Verizon site. Tried googling, got a lot of references to The Star tabloid.

Google turned up this on its first page, most look about right for GSM, I don't know if they will work for other protocols.

and you may have more luck with future googles if you use the word hash rather than pound.

I don't know. I always preferred ``octothorp''.

The only one I use regularly is AT&T's #121, which just connects you to tellme. It can come in quite handy at times, and is also great for amusing your friends if they've never used it before. (You loose, you bloody fool, you'll have to eat haggis for a week.)

Matthew

a quick google check using octothorp returns no results that help tony out

I didn't mean to imply that my statement might help anybody, other than, possibly, to increase his vocabulary in unuseful ways.

yes, and i didnt actually check google.

Yeah, I'm going to have to remember that one if I ever get on a quiz show.

I like "pig pen".

These links should clear it up (or maybe not!):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/26042.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

Gareth

Are you sure these are standard cell numbers? In general, I only need to press star and one number on my phone to access the options you describe. I think Star+2 for me is customer service.

Perhaps not standard. But maybe service-provider-specific. Since our family is using Verizon phones, I'm actually only interested in Verizion. I just keep discovering little things here and there that say stuff like "oh, to do that, you press star-blah-blah-blah", but it's only ever in answer to a specific question. No where have I seen a canonical list of star-whatever codes.

The GSM codes list is interesting, but I don't think we have GSM phones. Not sure.

He meant "octothorpe."


oc·to·thorpe
n.

The symbol (#).

You definitly don't. Verizon is CDMA(qualcomm) and doesn't get the cool toys.

I do know what you mean about the many hidden features. In AT&T voicemail, you press 7 to erase a message. If you press it before the message is finnished it just keeps playing. I assumed this was a "keep 'em on the line" feature, and I still think it is. However, a kind salesman was nice enough to tell me that if you press seven twice, it'll detele the message wether you've listened to it or not. No where in the entire voicemail guide do they tell you this.

Matthew

What I need is some way to customize the annoying woman who guide me through my voicemail. She gives me way too much information and I seem to spend just as long listening to her as I do my messages!

Or hitting 3 will jump you to the end of the message, if you just want to save it for later without deleting it. This of course means that 37 will skip-then delete. And you do not have to wait for confirmation.

And here is a decent list.

Hows this? If you need more I have a friend who works for Verizon, I can see what he can get me.

Yes, the absolute worst is "You have one unheard message. First unheard message. The following message has not been heard." which is so redundant and bugs me every time i get a voice mail.

Matthew

Amen.

The symbol

Oh, Prince....

/Michael

Hows this?

I'm sure it would be great... if there website didn't happen to be down right when I hit your link.

I'll check it tomorrow...

He meant "octothorpe."

Not according to Merriam-Webster.

Hmm. Odd, every other place I look it up has it with the "e." Maybe both are correct?

Interesting.

Not according to Merriam-Webster.

According to this story on the words origin, it's "octothorpe." It's a good story but who knows if it's true.

- trs

Unicode says ``octothorpe''. Let's go with them.